Expert: Gardening important to ‘Peter Rabbit’ author

Author Marta McDowell has studied the life and work of the late Beatrix Potter.

Eddie Fitzgerald/Sun Journal

By Eddie Fitzgerald, Sun Journal Staff

Published: Sunday, June 15, 2014 at 06:29 PM.

The life of a woman who created a classical rabbit and other favorite characters in children’s brooks was put into perspective Sunday by Marta McDowell, an accomplished writer and horticulturist.

McDowell presented a lecture at Cullman Performance Hall in the North Carolina History Center based on her latest book titled “Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The plants and places that inspired the classic children’s tales.”

Surprisingly, McDowell said she did not grow up reading Potter’s most popular children’s book “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.” But her interest with Potter started after seeing a couple of books about her in a book store.

As a writer and horticulturist who has taught classes at the New York Botanical Garden and has designed landscapes for museums and historic sites, McDowell said she was puzzled about how Potter learned gardening.

That puzzle led her to find out as much as she could about the famous author and to write about her. She visited Potter’s gardens in England and took photographs of some of the same scenes that Potter painted in watercolors. She also did extensive research.

“If you are a writer of nonfiction, you try to find a whole,” McDowell said. “You research to see what hasn’t been written about. A lot of research had already been done on her.”

Potter was not only an author of children’s books but also a renowned gardener, artist and naturalist.

The life of a woman who created a classical rabbit and other favorite characters in children’s brooks was put into perspective Sunday by Marta McDowell, an accomplished writer and horticulturist.

McDowell presented a lecture at Cullman Performance Hall in the North Carolina History Center based on her latest book titled “Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The plants and places that inspired the classic children’s tales.”

Surprisingly, McDowell said she did not grow up reading Potter’s most popular children’s book “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.” But her interest with Potter started after seeing a couple of books about her in a book store.

As a writer and horticulturist who has taught classes at the New York Botanical Garden and has designed landscapes for museums and historic sites, McDowell said she was puzzled about how Potter learned gardening.

That puzzle led her to find out as much as she could about the famous author and to write about her. She visited Potter’s gardens in England and took photographs of some of the same scenes that Potter painted in watercolors. She also did extensive research.

“If you are a writer of nonfiction, you try to find a whole,” McDowell said. “You research to see what hasn’t been written about. A lot of research had already been done on her.”

Potter was not only an author of children’s books but also a renowned gardener, artist and naturalist.

The characters in her books existed in a world filled with flowers and gardens that reflected Potter’s love of nature, McDowell said.

It was also a challenge to figure out what plants were illustrated in the children’s books and to match them with photographs and paintings of Potters’ gardens.

Potter, born in 1866 in London, probably did not learn about horticulture from her parents, who inherited wealth through cotton manufacturing, McDowell said.

Potter grew up in a house fronting a park, which would have been a garden, and visited the Royal Horticulture Society Garden and Kensington Gardens. She was also exposed to horticulture at a home her parents rented in Scotland and began making botanical watercolors of leaves and caterpillars at the age of 8, McDowell said.

Potter’s venture into the world of children’s books began when one of her governess’ sons became ill and she wrote him a letter illustrated with rabbits. The governess suggested she put them into a book, McDowell said.

But after she did write and illustrate a book called the “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” in 1902, it was rejected by every publishing house Potter submitted it to, so she published it herself. It wasn’t long before the publishing houses were begging her to sign with them.

“It was a phenomenon,” McDowell said. “It was like the ‘Harry Potter’ of its time.”

McDowell showed through slides the gardens Potter knew and painted in watercolors and how they would return in her books.

“She has taken actual garden scenes and put the rabbit in it,” McDowell said. “That’s what makes it so realistic.”

Potter, who married at 47, never had children of her own, but she left 4,000 acres of her English farms and gardens to the National Trust so children can still enjoy scenes that inspired Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Tom Kitten, Jemima Puddle-Duck and a host of other characters.